Finishing Well

Explore how being focused on finishing well helps us make wise decisions.

As a young man, Winston Churchill was a poor student with a speech impediment, who twice flunked the military academy’s entrance exams before finally getting in. Yet, Churchill will always be remembered for the eloquent and uncompromising consistency with which he led Great Britain through the darkest hours of World War II.

Due to the stunning dominance of Microsoft software in the 1980s and 90s, Bill Gates was often mocked as the dark dictator of all data. Yet, the billions of dollars he donated on behalf of worldwide health and education, as well as his post-retirement charitable work with the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, earned him new respect as a global philanthropist.

Abe Lincoln struggled throughout his professional and political career losing every political office he ran for until being elected president of the United States in 1860 due to the union being split. With a firm faith in divine interventions by God, he leaned on his faith to direct his decisions and is credited with preserving the union and being a shining example of excellent leadership.

Each man may have started out pursuing fame, fortune or power, but the greater good they performed late in life assured their place in history.

Human beings are blessed with selective memories. We filter out the vast majority of images, stories and people competing for our attention each day, because we have limited capacity to absorb information. With little or no direct contact, we draw little or no meaning and inspiration from those who make it past our filters. Individual actions, no matter how remarkable, eventually fade into irrelevance and background noise. Ah, but a life well-lived can grow from experience to story to history and occasionally into legend.

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